Page 95 of Experiments in Offline Dating

“Yeah. I think I can probably manage an hour or so without your whiny American accent interrogating me about every single decision I’ve ever made, or shoutin’ to the world that you don’t have syphilis.”

I smirked. “Deal.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up, then he leaned down and grabbed his backpack, pulled out a book of his own, and plopped it down on the table. It was a proper door stopper.

“Wait. You can read? Books?”

He gave me a dirty look and took a bite of his sandwich.

“Let me guess—sheep almanac?” I reached for the paperback, but he was too quick and snatched it off the table to smack my hand with it.

I laughed. Now I know what Pretty Woman felt like.

Holy crap! It was The Name of the Wind. The massively long high fantasy The Name of the Wind.

“Wha . . . What the hell? Is this some sort of joke? Are you pranking me right now?”

“What?” He took a casual bite of his sandwich and ignored the shrill decibel of my astonishment. “What are you on about now?”

I gasped and stared at him, but he just kept eating his stupid sandwich.

“Okay, let me break this down for you—this is a book.”

“Yep.”

“To read.”

“Yep.”

“For pleasure.”

He rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t know you even read books!”

“Well, I guess you don’t know everything after all, do you, smart-ass?”

“Furthermore, if memory serves me, this is a book without a single sheep in it.”

“It does mention some sheep, actually.”

“And even furthermore than that, this is not just any fiction book, this is a fantasy! A fucking high fantasy in a dense magical world complete with a magic university and mysterious dragons.”

“So?” he deigned to say between bites.

“I’ve read this book. I love this book!” Finn suddenly sat up and gave me a stern look like she would just love to bite the crap out of me if I didn’t stop shouting at her dad.

“All right, you. You need to take a breath, roll your tongue back into your mouth, and stop drooling all over my paperback.”

“But I don’t get it. You know I love fantasy! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Look, you may want to crunch the figures on this one, but I’m pretty certain that we’re not the only two people on the planet who read fantasy books.”

“We could have been talking about books this whole time! You told me you didn’t like to read!”

“Maybe I didn’t want to talk to you any more than was absolutely necessary.”

I scowled and poked him in the arm with a pointy finger. “Well, guess what? Too fucking bad, because we are absolutely going to talk about books!”